The Master Answers

A selection of questions and answers with Maharaj Charan Singh

Q: Maharaj Ji, I practise as a doctor and I am sure there are others here who are lawyers. How far are we to go in our efforts in our work? In many cases you can extend beyond treatment. How far should we go?
A: You should treat the patient according to the best of your ability, with the knowledge and skill that you have acquired. Still, with your best efforts, you can never get all the results that you want. If people could be saved by doctors and medicines, nobody would have died. We have no cure for certain diseases, though we do our best. We find that some medicine has cured some people, but others are not affected at all by the same medicine. We know all this, so we should try to use our knowledge to the best of our ability and then leave the rest to the Lord.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III}

Q: What is the best way to bring our children up in Sant Mat?
A: Bring them up lovingly and do your duty as a parent, and try to prepare them for love and devotion for the Father. Don’t try to condition their minds with any philosophy, but give them the general teaching of love for the Father. You have to preparethem for the Father and then let them make their own decision. Children are influenced by their parents and automatically start following them. So be a living example. That will be sufficient.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III}

Q: Can we live a life of service to the Master – of body, mind and wealth – before our mind has risen to a higher level?
A: Sister, the time we give to meditation is nothing but service to the Master. You cannot serve the Master in a better way than by following his instructions and living his way of life – attending to your meditation. This is the best service to the Master. You haveseen the gardener working harder on the trees that don’t yield any fruit, than on those trees which yield fruit. Those which yield fruit are actually helping the gardener by not demanding much of his time. They are serving the gardener. And those which don’t yield any fruit at all are making him work harder and harder, more and more. So we can serve the Master by following the teachings, and by living the teachings, thus bearing the fruit for which this human birth has been given to us.
_{Die to Live}

Q: Are we protected by the Lord only after initiation? Suppose we are still seekers?
A: The protection of the Lord is everywhere. When we sincerelywant to follow the path, when we sincerely want to go back to the Father, his protective hand is always on us. We should not worry about not being protected before initiation. Those souls who are marked to be initiated, who are allotted to a mystic, are protected right from birth in one way or another. Protection starts right from birth. They are not allowed to go so far astray that they cannot come back to the Father. When you fly a kite, you always have its string in your hand. The kite is flying in the sky. But whenever the person holding the string pulls that string back, the kite is pulled back. Similarly, every allotted soul that has been given over to the care of the Master is always protected by him right from birth, even if that soul is not yet initiated.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I}